Movie Review: "The Revenant" (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015)

INTO THE UNKNOWN by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass.  Photo ©20^TH Century Fox.

At the start of “The Revenant,” clear water trickles over tree roots.  For a time, the camera simply stares into those wet and muddy depths; then, it rises upward and towards two men tromping through the muck.  One is Hawk (Forrest Goodluck); the other is his father, a seething, hairy tower of a man named Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio).

            “The Revenant” is the sweeping saga of Hawk’s murder and Glass’ silent journey towards the bloody horizon of revenge.  Yet the film’s true lead is Alejandro G. Iñárritu, its aggressively ambitious director.  A brooding tackler of such modest subjects as The Decline of American Pop Culture (“Birdman”) and The Unabridged Narrative of Human Suffering (“Babel”), Mr. Iñárritu is never content to merely wow or entertain—he prefers to bludgeon us with his brilliance, to slam our faces against his striking compositions and tasteful ambiguities until we cry, “Uncle!” (and pine for “When Harry Met Sally…”).  

            Mr. Iñárritu is also a maniacally talented attention grabber.  Early in “The Revenant” (which is based in part on a novel by Michael Punke), Glass’ skin is shredded by the claws of a Grizzly in a fiesta of gore that seduces you with its acid reflex-inducing details.  That bear doesn’t just scratch Glass—it slashes his throat, drools over his torn body, licks his blood, and grinds his head into damp dirt with a gargantuan paw. 

            There are still monumental horrors to come.  Post-bear attack, Glass is buried by fur trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy).  Commanded by the pale Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), Glass and Fitzgerald have hiked through the northern expanse of the Louisiana Purchase (the film is set in 1823), seeking sellable pelts.  Yet Fitzgerald, seized by snarling self-preservation, abandons Glass, slaughters Hawk, then scurries into some snowy woods, little dreaming that Glass will live to walk and stalk him over cliffs, rivers, and snowdrifts, throbbed by a lust to avenge his slain son.

            I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the murder of Hawk is a mere force of plot.  Glass may hold his son close to his chest early in the film, but that moment feels hollow and forced.  Hawk’s death is engineered to propel Glass on his haunted quest; he lives to die, to justify Glass’ choice to slaughter Fitzgerald without a trace of regret.  Thus, while “The Revenant” gleams with icily gorgeous vistas, its heart is corroded by a noxious idea—that might really can make might.

            I don’t take such dubious ethics lightly.  Nor do I deny the film’s dreamlike allure.  In an era of cinematic formulas scarred by overuse, “The Revenant” gnaws itself free of many Tinseltown trimmings and trappings by seizing upon the surreal sight of Glass wordlessly battling through dirt, water, and ice as he hunts the wretched Fitzgerald.  To behold his journey is to experience something rarely felt in an American cineplex—the sensation of being entranced by the primal thrill of witnessing a man alone in the wild, dwarfed by monstrous, unblemished mountains and plains.

            During these torturous travels, Mr. DiCaprio limps and shimmies on his stomach over gravelly terrain.  His roughened features suit the movie’s giddy bleakness, most of all in a scene where Glass sinks to his knees while the wind blows in orbit around his ragged beard.  In that moment, Glass goes shiveringly still.  After all his ordeals, there’s nothing left to do but freeze.